Questioning Techniques. “Good learning starts with questions, not answers”. This article provides a wealth of links to resources to improve you questioning skills.

Using effective questions. Provides a good introduction to “Why” ask questions, “What” questions to ask and “How” to design and incorporate good questions in to your practice.

The Art of asking questions. This article discusses both question types that foster conversation (e.g. Do you think George made the “right” decision when he killed Lennie in the final scene of Steinbeck’s novel, Of Mice and Men?) and question types that kill conversation.

Funnel Questions are trying to go somewhere – gaining the confidence of the audience or get more detail. Start with general, closed questions and move to more specific, open questions.
(“How did you do on the fractions quiz? Did it cover both multiplying and dividing fractions? Were there any word problems? Did you have any problems with the quiz? What do you think went wrong on the word problems section?”)

Probing Questions get more information, often using who, what, where, when, why and how questions.
(“How do you know you only need Math 4 to get in to that program? Who did you speak to about it? What’s going to happen if Potsy was wrong and you need more Math than that? When does the program start and will you still have time to finish Math 10 before then, just in case?”)

Use the right question type for the type of answer you’re looking for. Open-ended questions are more effective if your goal is to understand a process, However, if your goal is to understand an outcome, close-ended questions are far more efficient (Kolar).

Just as important as asking the right type of question is asking questions at the appropriate level of difficulty and then scaffolding to a more difficult questions. Penick, Crow and Bonnstetter’s HRASE hierarchy emphasizes prior and applies this prior experience throughout the rest of the hierarchy.

History – What happened when you…?

Relationship – What do all these procedures have in common?

Application – How could this idea be used to solve…?

Speculation – What would happened if you changed …?

Explanation – Which of the three methods would I use to solve this quadratic? Why did you choose that one? Walk me through it.

As a math tutor, I often scaffold when I ask questions. If students don’t understand a concept, I try to start with a question I know they can answer – what or how questions, before moving on to more complex questions – what if I? before moving on to the Why questions. My questions might look like this.

What are you trying to figure out – area or perimeter?

How do you calculate the perimeter?

What if the shape is a square? Is there a shorter equation I can use?

Why can I use that equation if it’s a square, but not if I’m measuring the perimeter of this classroom?

I do use this and it’s very effective, but it’s also quite time-consuming to come up with each question set for each topic. The other thing I find is that some students just get annoyed by this approach because they’re just not ready for higher order thinking or to take responsibility for understanding. If you use formula A for a square and formula B for a rectangle and formula C for everything else, that’s all they want to know. So, be mindful of how far up the scaffold your students are willing to go without getting annoyed with you.

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If you want students to ask questions, the culture in your classroom has to support them in that. Building a culture of inquiry means fostering an atmosphere where asking and answering questions is safe. Here are some articles to get you started thinking about building a culture of inquiry:

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“Students learn to ask questions by asking questions. Students learn to ask good questions by asking questions and then receiving feedback on them. Students learn to become scholars by learning to ask good questions.” Marshall Brain. (1998) The Importance of Questions

It’s not only important that teachers ask good questions, it’s also a vital skill for students. Here’s some resources on teaching questioning:

Video games can be a wonderful way to learn something that has to be memorized – like times tables, prime numbers, factors because it allows the player to get enough repetition to memorize something before they’re so bored that they stop paying attention. Memorizing from flash cards isn’t nearly as fun as earning points for shooting only the prime numbers out of the sky. IMHO, gameification has so much potential to engage my discouraged and disinterested students that I’m actively pursuing it. But, I’m keeping in mind that the model has limits. I think there are only a few things that the model CAN teach effectively. I’d say that if it’s low on the Bloom’s Taxonomy, it can probably be ported to a game. But learning objectives that require higher order thinking will be more difficult and much more costly to port to gaming.

For example, as a software developer, I can take a shoot ‘em up game and change the targets – blow up asteroids and avoid ice crystals to earn points and win the game, drop in some new graphics and change it to blow up prime numbers and avoid non-prime numbers to earn points and win the game. All the graphics, sounds, and logic – the expensive stuff – is already written and can be re-used. All I need to do to create this new game is some small cosmetic changes to create a relatively interesting game for a small cost.

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The ARCS Model of Motivational Design, created by John Keller is based on Tolman’s and Lewin’s expectancy-value theory, which assumes that people are motivated to learn if there they expect success in learning it and value the knowledge presented. The model concentrates on four main factors that lead to student engagement:

Ground Rules Many problems can be avoided if ground rules are established at the beginning. This guide discusses when to set ground rules (at the beginning), how to explain them (what they are, thy they exist) and provides some example rules you might consider using in your own class.The Key to Classroom Management Providing practical strategies for building positive classroom dynamics, this well-researched article points out that because teacher-student relationships are an essential foundation for effective classroom management, teacher-student relationships should be managed and not just left to chance.

I did learn a lot about classroom management from this discussion. However, there’s one problem I didn’t see any resources about. In my classroom, we accept inappropriate dress, coming late, leaving early, salty language. When someone voices something that is clearly out of line, someone will usually correct them “Hey Bro, that kind of talk is not supportive”. But, I’ve yet to find a resource to address how to handle an almost fight, the most stressful problem in my classroom. I’ve refereed half a dozen and punches have yet to be thrown. Still, I’d like to find a resource for this issue.

Here’s a valuable site from Carnegie Mellon University that provides practical strategies to address common teaching problems. It has you identify a teaching problem and possible causes and then provides you with strategies to address the problem. It covers a variety of teaching problems, broken down in to the following categories:

In his book, Visible Learning (2009), John Hattie summarizes 15 years of research in to what works to improve learning outcomes in school. He collated the results of over 50,000 studies and, from that, produced a list of over 100 practices factors and assigns a numerical value to them to indicate their impact on student achievement. Hattie sets the threshold of effectiveness at .40, meaning any practice that scored below .40 should be discarded.

Of the 138 influences he studied, some of which were factors outside our control, such as television and some of which were practices used within our schools, only 52% of them passed his threshold. Of course, the implication is that practices that score below .40 should be discarded.

As a parent and as a taxpayer, I was dismayed to see some of the practices that fell in to this category, practices that don’t work, but were tried in the school system, such as

The whole language concept which, in the 1980-1990s, that saw textbooks and readers replaced by books and worksheets, at great expense and little in the way of results

Problem based learning, which saw Math Textbooks abandoned as ineffective and replaced with worksheets that had no continuity, resulting in children who are mystified by how math concepts fit together as a whole

Class size, which has had our local school system in an uproar for 20 years but would have little in the way of benefit to students if reduced

I was glad to see that some of my pet strategies scored highly, namely

Meta-cognitive strategies (.69)

Teacher-Student relationships (.72)

Study skills (.50)

Direct Instruction (.59)

Problem Solving Teaching (.61)

I was pleased to find some of the factors that had the biggest positive effect are incorporated in to the math program in which I teach, specifically

Mastery learning (.58)

Providing formative evaluation (.90)

Teacher Clarity (.75)

Feedback (.73)

I was equally pleased to find the influence that had the biggest positive effect is the instructional strategy I just researched for my Instructional Strategies video, Self-reported Grades (student expectation, post-test analysis).

“Poor metacognition is a big part of incompetence. People who are incompetent typically do not realize how incompetent they are. People who aren’t funny at all think they are hilarious…A lot of reality shows like American Idol highlight people with poor metacognition for entertainment.” This quote from the article explains very nicely the impact of poor metacognitive skills outside of education, but the article also goes on to explain how to use formative assessment techniques throughout teaching. Maybe I liked it so much because it agrees with what I think on the subject. Here’s the link:

The article stems from a conversation between the author, James Lang and Stephen Chew at Stanford. Professor Chew also supplied a list of references for further reading on the subject, posted on Lang’s blog at: